The Secret Weapon in the Lyft versus Uber Fight? Enter, Taco Mode

Kellan Terry breaks down the latest on what's blowing up on social. The fight between Uber and Lyft just got dirtier - with added tacos.

Last week we noticed social bubbling around the ride-sharing company Lyft, and a co-marketing promotion they entered with Taco Bell.

Examining the past two weeks we see that Lyft has been mentioned more than 310,000 times online – a large discussion that many brands don’t achieve in such a time period.

However, Uber’s conversation is larger with more than 431,000 mentions in only one week, and this is common. Uber’s volume generally always outperforms Lyft’s social discussion. Furthermore, these two brands find that they share many mentions. This is the peril of offering, essentially, the same service/product – creating differentiation.

We frequently observe brands with social conversations that weave in amongst their most direct competitors, and Lyft is now attempting to stand apart with its most recent co-marketing initiative with Taco Bell. Enter: Taco Mode.

Taco Mode itself has been mentioned over 9,800 in the past two days, and it is responsible for the most mentions of Lyft online in the past two weeks (also, the most mentions of Taco Bell within the past week).

You can see that the partnership resulting in Taco Mode has been talked about quite positively online with Taco Mode’s conversation seeing a sentiment of 86.7% of all categorized mentions being positive.

Life has hanged so much since my college days. I would have given anything for taco mode!!! https://t.co/UCdpTF70rp

That figure is more positive than both brand conversations with Lyft at 74.8% positive, and Taco Bell at 52.7% positive (Please Note: there is a lot of slang in Taco Bell’s conversation, hence muddling its sentiment a bit).

Before, Lyft’s conversation was driven (pun not intended) by promotions and discount offers – much like Uber’s – but this new partnership with Taco Bell has taken control of Lyft’s conversation.

Below are the top themes within Lyft’s conversation.

You can see mentions of Uber along with mentions of Taco Bell in the above topic cloud, but the below cloud illustrates the main themes that are emerging and topical now (to the right).

You can see mentions of Taco Bell and Lyft’s partnership and “munchies,” which is referring to Taco Mode, are moving Lyft’s conversation towards this exclusive offering.

This recent co-marketing feature isn’t just an attempt to get people to ride with Lyft, it’s also trying to morph Lyft’s social conversation into one that is solely their own.

Scaramucci’s mentions do the fandango

Our next data story from last week will focus on the headlines incited by new White House Director of Communications, Anthony Scaramucci.

Much like Trump himself, Scaramucci caused quite a bit of commotion on Twitter when news broke that he’d been named as the Director of Communications on July 21. This one day saw more than 191,000 mentions of Scaramucci on Twitter.

However, that total pales in comparison to July 27’s 290,000 Twitter mentions.

These mentions were driven by The New Yorker’s story below.

Scaramucci’s conversation sentiment is now muddled.

As of Friday afternoon EST, Scaramucci’s conversation was positive within sentiment-categorized mentions at a rate of 58.2%. However, this sentiment is more of a reflection of the above article, and the late-night television depictions than the man himself.

To learn more about what people are talking about with regards to the man, we look to the conversation’s most popular topics. His nickname “The Mooch” is front and center, but so is his budding rivalry with Reince Priebus, and his contradictory tweets that he deleted upon taking his new position in the White House.

We’ll continue to look to The Mooch’s Twitter conversation to see how public opinion and attention washes over him.